Ineos Grenadier - long-term review

The Grenadier doesn’t have built-in sat nav. You’re not shocked by this – you’ve never used it in your car since you could hook your phone up. The Grenadier has Apple CarPlay of course, and that does me for 95 per cent of the time. But the point is this is a vehicle that’s designed to come alive where phone signal runs out. And at that point, the Grenadier is essentially lost.

Or rather unable to communicate its location to you in any useful guise. Even if you speak fluent global lat/long coordinates you don’t know what’s around you because there’s no built-in mapping. This is a drawback. Ineos had the chance to think imaginatively about off-road navigation but chose instead to let customers sort it out themselves with Garmin accessories. What the Grenadier has instead is Pathfinder – basically a breadcrumb trail that you can leave as you drive along so you can find your way back, Little Red Riding Hood-style.

It's actually a bit cleverer than that, as you can upload GPX routes, share them between your friends and so on, but when you’re in the back of beyond it’s no substitute for actually knowing what’s around you. As we found out recently when we trekked into deepest Wales for an off-road test pitching the new Toyota Land Cruiser against a Land Rover Defender, Mercedes G-Class and Ineos Grenadier.

Just not this Ineos Grenadier because, as I’ve mentioned before, it’s a Fieldmaster which means it doesn’t have the locking front and rear diffs, snorkel and knobbly BFGoodrich K02 tyres (an £825 option on mine) of the Trialmaster. That’s the one to have then. Add a winch or two. Lean in to its off-road ability, because that’s the Grenadier’s superpower. The Fieldmaster is impressive off-road, the Trialmaster is essentially unstoppable.

It did feel big and heavy in that company though – hardly surprising since it’s the heaviest, 400kg weightier than the Toyota. Look underneath and you can see why: bash plates, steering rods as thick as your forearm, proper towing eyes with four-tonne load capacity. It is built to endure. And it’s very impressive, just a bit annoying to operate.

For instance, in order to reduce stuff that could go wrong Ineos hasn’t fitted sensors in the diffs as that would have required an extra cable. Instead it relies on the wheel speed sensors to tell the car if the diff is locked or not. But unless the car turns tightly, it doesn’t know. End result? The ceiling diff light blinks a lot and you’re not entirely sure what’s going on with the clanking bits. And that matters when you’re off-road. The others made it simpler – and didn’t require you to stop all the time to engage modes and diffs.  

But I do think it is a very considered piece of off-road design. The ladder can take 150kg, so can the roof even if you don’t have the rack fitted. In some markets the front wings are rated to take the same weight so you can stand on them to swing a sledgehammer at a fencepost. They’re not in the UK because of pedestrian impact regs. If you want to plug any accessories in it’s super-simple. Along the roof edge are several pre-wired electrical leads. Simply attach your lightbar, plug it in and flick a roof switch.

The £819 LED light bar is absolute dynamite by the way. Do not use it on-road, it will not only traumatise oncoming cars, it’ll wreck your night-vision in the cabin. When you turn it off you’ll think you are only running on side lights, when you actually have main beam engaged. All of this stuff the Grenadier does exceptionally well. For me essentially using it as a lifestyle truck it is as over-engineered as a supercar is for someone tottering around Monaco.

Where it falls down is as a ‘luxury’ car. This is the area Ineos sees growth in, selling the Grenadier as a Defender-rivalling school run truck. I can’t see that audience buying it in any significant numbers. It’s not just the steering, the heft and unwieldiness of it, it’s the lack of soft furnishings and standard kit. Because a fully kitted Grenadier Fieldmaster isn’t really any more luxurious than a Dacia Duster.